“THE library is dying. All across the country, branches are closing, shelves are shrinking, and budgets are tightening, in Seattle’s case, by an estimated $5 million. Fewer and fewer librarians can find jobs, and those who do find themselves underutilized and underappreciated. Most people don’t grasp the full extent of this decay. After all, most people haven’t set foot inside a library since Seattle had a basketball team. Why would they? In this new information age, we have smartphones, high-speed Internet, Wikipedia, Kindles and Nooks. The entirety of human knowledge is never more than a few clicks or taps away.”